


Grilled Cheese Sandwiches and Zebra Cats

by fiacresgirl



Series: Summer of Sorrow [2]
Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: Angst, Coping, F/M, Grief, Hurt/Comfort, PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-04
Updated: 2016-06-04
Packaged: 2018-07-12 03:55:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,917
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7084636
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fiacresgirl/pseuds/fiacresgirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A lazy Saturday morning with Felicity, Sara, and Lyla as they try to get on with life after Damien Darhk and Genesis.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Grilled Cheese Sandwiches and Zebra Cats

**Author's Note:**

> Another peek into how Felicity, Lyla, and Sara are helping each other. 
> 
> Thank you to all the readers who embraced the first piece. I want these to be brief looks into how Felicity and Lyla coping at different times and with different people as things fall out after Genesis.

Felicity pulls her hair back into a sloppy ponytail without even brushing it, just to get it off her face. It’s noon on Saturday, and she’s still in her pajamas. She’s spent the morning playing with Sara and her pink and white Little People house. It’s silly and brainless, but Felicity loves it. The house is very basic, but the front door opens, the little toilet flushes, and Sara loves flinging the small blond girl out of her bunk bed. She does it over and over. “Baby up!” she yells every time and laughs.

Sara is very particular about where the people in the house can do. “Mama” and “Dada” sleep in the big people bed, not in the bunk bed with “Baby,” although sometimes the zebra from the Noah’s Ark set gets to sleep on the top bunk. Sara calls the zebra “Reo” after the cat Oreo who lives two apartments down from the Diggles’. Felicity cannot persuade her that it’s a zebra, and she’s given up trying. It’s more fun to make cat sounds than zebra sounds anyway.

The dollhouse is fun, but Felicity hates the Little People DVDs. She wishes Sara didn’t like them so much. The stories are ridiculous; they routinely break the laws of nature to be cute. All of the characters are annoying; they spend all of their time learning how to get along with each other. Who does that?

What would the Little People do in real life if they met people who didn’t even care that they hurt your feelings when they fired you from being CEO? What would they do if they met someone who tried to destroy the entire world out of spite? They wouldn’t spend all day getting their friends together to build a special surprise for Sonya Lee if Sonya Lee were a psychotic ex-girlfriend bent on murder and revenge, would they?

They sure as hell wouldn’t. They’d stick Sonya Lee’s ass in jail where she belonged and not worry about her dead fiancé or her sad feelings.

Felicity realizes she’s banging Mama too hard against the hardwood floor. Sara is staring at her, so she puts the little doll carefully in the big bed in the upstairs bedroom. “I think it’s time for lunch,” she says. “How ‘bout some grilled cheese?”

Sara nods as she always does when anyone mentions cheese. Felicity gets up and goes to the kitchen to rummage around in the refrigerator for the Velveeta and the butter. Grilled cheese is the pinnacle in comfort food for her. Her mother always made it when she was sick because she could manage grilled cheese and Campbell’s chicken noodle soup without burning anything.

Felicity ignores the kale in the crisper, but takes out an apple to slice for Sara. Then she pops the top on the soup can and pours it into a small pot and turns on the burner. There we go. Halfway to lunch.

Sara toddles over to hug Felicity’s knees. She lifts her arms up.

“I have to watch the stove, Sara,” Felicity says, shaking her head. “Lunch will be ready in a minute.”

Sara nods. “Appo?” she asks Felicity grabs a knife to cut off a chunk for her. As Sara begins to gnaw on it, she looks behind Felicity and smiles. “Mama!” she says. Lyla is up.  

A.R.G.U.S. has grilled Lyla all day every day this week to account for her actions in the takedown of Damien Darhk, and the bags under her eyes were actual luggage, but she looks a little refreshed after a good sleep. Felicity is glad. “Sit down,” she says. “I’ll make you grilled cheese too.”

Lyla gives her the look that means “Velveeta is not a substance found in nature,” but she grabs some plates from the cupboard, sets the table, and pulls Sara into her lap as she sits down. “What’s up?”

“Sara and I took Reo down to introduce him to Oreo about an hour ago, but her people weren’t home,” Felicity says. Sara scootches down off of Lyla’s lap and runs to find Reo.

“Her people?” Lyla says, smiling.

Felicity smiles and butters another piece of bread. “Cats have staff. That’s the way it works.”

“Hear anything from Palmer?” Lyla asks.

“Nope,” Felicity says, slicing the Velveeta and arranging it to fit on the bread.

“Did you talk to Oliver? _Talk_ to him, not anything else.”

Felicity puts the sandwiches together and flips them into the pan with a spatula. The soup is already heating up, so she turns down both burners. It’s a trick to heat the sandwiches to get the bread and the cheese to melt right. She goes to the refrigerator again and pulls out a couple more apples and puts them on the table.

“You said you were going to,” Lyla says.

“I don’t know what to say to him,” Felicity says. “It’s easier to just have sex with him. We know how to manage that.”

“Yeah,” Lyla says. She doesn’t sound convinced.

“What am I supposed to do with him?” Felicity asks. “I can’t just go back to the way things were.”

“I wish you’d let him pick you up here,” Lyla says. “Or just go over there for the night if you’re going to be there anyway.”

Felicity flips the sandwiches one by one. The cheese isn’t really melting, but the bread is browning nicely. “I don’t mean to go there. I start off the night thinking I’m okay. I’m fine. I’ll read a book or work on my villain identification algorithm. And then I’m just there, and we’re… I know I’m just using him.”

“I don’t think that’s the problem,” Lyla says.

“Why can’t I just _let go_ of him?” Felicity asks. “He didn’t tell me about his son! For months! And he didn’t consult me about what he should do about Samantha and William before he made arrangements for them to go into hiding! How can I possibly live with someone who makes unilateral decisions like that? It would be insane! If I stay with him, he’s going to wreck me.”

Lyla picks up one of the apples and bites into it, and, hearing the crunch, Sara comes over to get another slice for herself. Felicity flips the sandwiches over again. The cheese _still_ isn’t melting. She adjusts the burner up a little bit, and then she turns to face Lyla. “Tell me what to do. Tell me I should dump him. Or tell me we can make it work. I just want to know what to do.”

“I can’t tell you that, sweetie,” Lyla says. “That’s what sucks about being an adult. You have to stumble about and make your own mistakes. Most of the time, if you’re lucky, people don’t die.” She frowns and pulls Sara in her lap again.

“You did your best,” Felicity says, but she knows she’s not convincing Lyla, so she does the practical thing and gets out some bowls to pour the soup in.

“Did I?” Lyla asks. “Oliver told me exactly what would happen, and I ordered those men in there anyway.”

“Oliver’s wrong half of the time,” Felicity says. “More than that. Sixty percent, at least.”

“When he’s right, he’s really right, though,” Lyla says. “He told Johnny not to trust Andy, and he was right about that too.”

“A stopped clock is right twice a day,” Felicity says. “He went to Central City to see them behind my back.”

“He went to see William,” Lyla says. “Not Samantha.”

“He went there _behind my back_ ,” Felicity says.

“He didn’t do it to hurt you, though.”

“He did hurt me.” A smell rises from the pan, and Lyla stands up and moves to the stove.

“I’m not sure I’m the best one to defend him,” Lyla sighs. “Oliver is a good man. It’s amazing what he’s survived and accomplished, but he’s got a lot of baggage that comes with him. If you don’t want to haul that around with you, I don’t blame you, but that’s what he is. Everything about him is outsized - his life, his history, his family, his looks, his love for you. You can’t forget that. Not many people would literally die for you. Oliver is willing to die for strangers, for Star City, I can’t even imagine what he would be willing to do for you.”

“I know,” Felicity says. “That was a stupid decision too. He should have told John and me what he was facing, but of course he didn’t. Because opening your mouth up and communicating is worse than dying.”

Lyla slides a cheese sandwich - slight singed now - on a plate. “He’s always going to make questionable decisions when he’s under stress. He reacts and tries to keep everything under control. It must be exhausting to try as hard as he does to keep things from blowing up all the time.”

“It must be,” Felicity says bitterly. “Do I need a larger-than-life guy?”

Lyla smiles. “Don’t kid yourself, everything about you is outsized too. Brainiac prodigy, the child of the Calculator. You have your mother’s steely determination, and you’ve helped save Star City four times now. Do you think you’ll be able to settle down with someone from accounting?”

“I’m giving up on men,” Felicity says, cutting up the sandwich into little bites for Sara. “They’re not worth the bother. It’s all sex, self loathing, and fighting supervillains. They never want to watch **Pride and Prejudice** with you.”

“We could make a go of it maybe,” Lyla says, her blue eyes twinkling. “You’re good with Sara. No Velveeta, though. You have to draw the line somewhere. This is practically child abuse.”

Felicity rolls her eyes. “So I should end it?”

“I didn’t say that,” Lyla says. “I didn’t say anything. If you go back to him, though, you should realize this won’t be the last surprise.”

“I know,” Felicity says, “But there was so much good stuff about him--”

“There’s _still_ so much good about him,” Lyla says. “More than there was before, if we’re being honest.”

“But I don’t get to have that stuff - most of that stuff now,” Felicity corrects herself and looks away.

“That’s your choice,” Lyla says, popping Sara into her highchair and snapping the belt around her wriggling belly. “You get to make it. The hard part is that you have to live with it.”

That is the hard part. Why isn’t there any easy part? There should be an easy part, damn it. When was it going to show up, that easy part?

Felicity sighs. Well, until the easy part got here, there were grilled cheese sandwiches, late night jogs, and lazy Saturday mornings.

Sara bangs her zebra cat on the tray of her highchair. “Yum,” she says. “More appo?”

Felicity takes the apple in the middle of the table and carves another slice. She hands it to Sara who mashes it in her fist happily. Felicity bites into the remainder. Its crispness catches on her front teeth, and she rolls it on her tongue.

This apple must have come from far away to be here, fresh and delicious now, she thinks. Either that or it’s been in cold storage for longer than it was on the tree. After all of that, it’s still sweet. It’s delicious, in fact.

How did it manage it, this apple? How did it survive? Maybe If she figured that out, she could decide about Oliver and the rest of it.


End file.
